2024 was a year in which the Turkish textile industry proved its resilience and innovative power despite the challenges. A resurgence in the sector is expected in 2025, with a focus on value-added production, green transformation and technical textiles.
2024 Year Evaluation and Expectations
“İbrahim Burkay: 2024 was a year of global and regional challenges. Geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainties and protectionist policies had a negative impact on global trade, while the deterioration in consumption and production could not be fully eliminated. The negative outlook, especially in Germany and the Eurozone, increased our risks and made our efforts to develop new markets and trade partnerships even more important.
Despite the positive effects of the tight policies implemented in our country to combat inflation, our SMEs face high costs and difficulties in accessing financing. At this point, the Central Bank’s interest rate cut was a promising step to support production and exports. Moreover, focusing incentive policies on high technology and sustainable development will play a critical role in achieving Türkiye’s economic goals. The fact that the increase in the exchange rate is not commensurate with inflation challenges the competitiveness of our exporters, and more effective financing tools are needed in this area.
Although the signs of recovery in global trade are promising, geopolitical risks make it necessary to act cautiously. As the Bursa business community, we will continue to develop new strategies to turn these challenges into opportunities.”
Textile Sector and its Future
“İbrahim Burkay: 2024 was also a challenging year for our textile industry. Increasing costs and low exchange rates had a negative impact on our exports. However, the Turkish textile industry is strong enough to overcome periodic challenges with its historical accumulation, experience and innovative approach. Despite all the difficulties, Türkiye is still among the world’s most important production and export centers in the textile industry. Today, the textile industry, which directly employs 1.5 million people, is the locomotive of the Turkish economy. However, competition in global trade is increasing every year. This situation necessitates differentiation in production. Based on this fact, we need to increase value-added production in the textile sector and our share in technical textiles. Our share in world trade in technical textiles is below 5%. To the extent that we can realize a transformation strategy that will increase this rate to 50 percent, we will also create a production ecosystem where high labor and energy costs will no longer be a problem.
In addition, the green transformation process is of critical importance for our industry. Waste management, water consumption control and recycling are key issues in our sustainable production targets. Problems in blue-collar employment have also become a threat to the growth of the sector.
As Bursa Chamber of Commerce and Industry, we offer solutions to our sector in the fields of technical textiles, clean production, water recovery and employment with our projects such as BUTEKOM, Model Factory, Energy Efficiency Center and BUTGEM. The increase in such projects will bring permanent solutions to the problems in the sector.
We aim to transform our textile industry not only as a production area, but also as a platform where labor is combined with innovation and design. In 2025, we believe that our industry will regain momentum and continue to be one of the strongest dynamics of the Turkish economy. We will continue to work with determination for our industry to grow and gain a stronger place in the world.”
